Renewed hope for biodiversity – governments agree crucial steps to fund and monitor global goals to protect nature

This week governments resumed negotiations to solve and prevent the escalation of the biodiversity crisis. This meeting known as CBD COP16.2 (16^th meeting of the Convention of Biological Diversity, Conference of the Parties) is a continuation of the negotiations following last year’s failure to reach an agreement in Cali, Colombia. The key topic of contention: How are countries going to fund goals to protect biodiversity? 

After three days of long discussions, a breakthrough finally came at 10.45pm (CET) on the last day with the adoption of a plan for financing biodiversity protection. The relief and jubilation at finally reaching an agreement is testament to the sheer perseverance of the negotiators.  This historic moment demonstrates that governments can work together to solve our biggest global challenges, despite the often-fraught negotiations and current challenging geopolitical environment.  

The key outcome in Rome is a roadmap towards creating a dedicated financial mechanism for biodiversity by 2030, first envisioned when the Convention was adopted in 1992.  Also, included within this roadmap is the development of a strategy to close the biodiversity finance gap (the difference between the money needed to protect biodiversity and the money which is available). This strategy represents a hard-won consensus and is testament to the determination of the Colombian Presidency who led the negotiations and built trust with governments to balance hugely divergent views. 

The decision on how to fund biodiversity protection unlocked the rest of the negotiations to enable further agreements.  This included decisions on how governments monitor national progress, and how global progress towards achieving the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework will be assessed. The outcomes of this meeting cannot be underestimated; without funding, without being able to monitor progress and hold governments accountable, the Global Biodiversity Framework is no more than aspirational words.  

It was heartening to see that Ministers from across the globe prioritised this incredibly important meeting, including the Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, who led the successful negotiation of the Global Biodiversity Framework alongside the Chinese Presidency in 2022.

Feature Image © Shutterstock/ lovelyday12

‘’Today’s historic deal proves that multilateralism is alive and kicking.  We now have a roadmap to secure the finances required to avert the biodiversity crisis, and the means to monitor and review progress.  These crucial steps must now be backed up with real money from developed nations who promised just 26 months ago to provide $20 billion additional resources by the end of 2025.  We are a long way short of this target and so we urge governments to redouble their efforts to find the funding to invest in nature – crucial to our own future prosperity.’’ Martin Harper, CEO, BirdLife International

On the ground, BirdLife’s partners, RSPB (UK), SCNL (Liberia) and NAJU (the Youth arm of our German partner), were part of the action.

‘’These past few days have been an important test for multilateralism. I came to Rome with the Liberian delegation looking to agree a way forward to finance our global nature goals, as well as to monitor and review progress. I am very encouraged that the collaborative spirit of countries prevailed in the final hours of the COP – putting the needs of nature first. Now, it’s urgent to turn our attention to action on the ground, and we are well underway with this process in Liberia – a nature-rich country which currently holds about 43% of the rainforest in West Africa. We’re excited to soon see the launch of our NBSAP and our 30×30 strategy which will help us to put our ambitions nature targets into action. ‘’ Michael Garbo, Executive Director, SCNL (BirdLife in Liberia)

Whilst there is ample cause for celebration at this result, we must now look forward to the next steps. Agreeing a strategy for closing the biodiversity finance gap is only the first step on the path towards 2030.  The focus must now be on securing and using biodiversity funds to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework. We are only months away from the first target to raise biodiversity funding to $20 billion annually by 2025.  We are still far from achieving this, with estimated funds only sitting between $6.7-$12.8bn. The world is watching, developed nations must step up, and with a turbulent global political environment, the stakes couldn’t be higher.